Chris Paine's documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car? excoriated US car makers ? but they'll probably like his new film
It's safe to say that film maker Chris Paine was the scourge of General Motors not so long ago.
His 2006 documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car? accused the auto industry and oil companies of ganging up to destroy the first generation of mass-produced plug-in vehicles ? GM's EV1. After losing $1bn on an electric car leasing scheme, the company repossessed all 5,000 of the cars, sending them to the crusher.
Five years later, however, there are more than 15,000 electric cars on American roads and the plug-in Chevy Volt is the engine behind GM's recovery.
Paine documents the return from the dead of the plug-in in a new film, Revenge of the Electric Car.
Paine said in a telephone interview:
"It's very gratifying to see the industry turn around. Obviously we don't have everybody driving electric cars but the fact that on the very inside so many of these corporations are looking at electric cars so seriously is remarkable when you consider what was happening five years ago."
His sequel is an insiders' film. There's Bob Lutz at GM, who bet the company's recovery on the Volt, after the auto industry bailout. There's Nissan's Carlos Ghosn who also took risks with the Leaf, and Tesla's Elon Musk, the inventor of Paypal who used his own money to produce the luxury sports car.
Paine said it took some doing persuading the executives to open up ? especially GM because of its portrayal in the original film. But the company actually made the first approach, with Lutz sending an email inviting Paine to track the development of the EV1's successor.
The companies were also worried about compromising business secrets, but were reassured when Paine promised to hold all the footage until after their cars were on the market.
"It was a big risk," he said.
Some critics have also suggested there is a risk for Paine, if he is seen as aiding in the rehabilitation of car makers once seen as so out-of-touch with reality that they were still producing gas-guzzling SUVs at a time when gasoline prices were at a historic $4 (�2.55) a gallon.
The Los Angeles Times reported this week that Tesla would be hosting a party for the film at one of its showrooms. Meanwhile, Nissan is going to be giving away free tickets to its screenings. "This film is much more sympathetic to their issues than the first one was," Paine said.
But, despite the happy ending for the electric car, Paine still hasn't got over the loss of the EV1. Its destruction will probably make it harder to convince Americans they can trust electric vehicles, he said.
"The tragedy was that they destroyed the cars so that nobody could experience them so the whole debate was just a theory. There wasn't the visceral experience," he added.
The short-sightedness may have also cost American auto makers the time advantage against their European competitors. BMW is working on an electric car, and so is Volvo ? though the car ran out of charge and had to be towed when it was test driven by Susanna Baltscheffsky, the environment editor at Svenska Dagbladet.
Paine is still pining for his old two-seater EV1. "I miss that car," he said. The car, he insists, was "a piece of engineering genius" ? though he admits the successor generations are a lot more practical.
These days, however, he drives a Chevy Volt.
? The film opens in New York and Los Angeles on Friday 21 October 2011 before moving on to 25 other cities across the US.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/green-living-blog/2011/oct/20/electric-car-film
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